Jonah Goldberg accurately describes some of the Republican Party's problems, but he is deluding himself if he truly believes its main issue is that it isn't doing a good job of persuading Americans.

The real problem for the Republican Party is the extreme ideological views of its core constituencies. The religious right believes God is on its side; economically conservative Republicans believe in failed policies of deregulation and trickle-down tax rules; climate-change deniers believe global warming is a hoax; the GOP money establishment maintains that giving money to politicians is free speech rather than legalized bribery; and the gun-rights wing is opposed to any sensible measures on firearms.

The problem is not that Republicans haven't done a good job of persuading but rather that their views are unpersuasive.

Michael Asher

Valley Village

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Goldberg expresses his frustration that conservatism is not connecting with the masses. Could it be because many Americans rely on the basic government safety nets that the conservatives want to eliminate? And when the religious right hijacked the GOP, it turned off moderate conservatives.

Goldberg doesn't address these issues, but they are a big part of the reason voters have turned away from the GOP. And until the party realizes that the demographic changes in this country don't favor Republicans, it will continue to lose national elections.

New analysis of state voter registration counts by Latino Decisions reveals strong growth in Latino registered voters across the 50 states. In July, Ruy Teixeira and William Frey first analyzed the May 2012 Census data, and found that steady increases in the Latino citizen voting age population (CVAP) could decide five key battleground states in 2012. Taking the Teixeira and Frey data for the total eligible population, Latino Decisions has estimated the total registered voter population for Latinos and non-Latinos in each state, and compared the numbers from 2012 to 2008. By our count there are now nine states with 101 electoral college votes where the Latino vote could prove to be the deciding factor.

PRINCETON, NJ -- In many respects, the demographic profile of Democrats nationwide is similar to what it was in 2008, although Democrats have become somewhat less white and more liberal than the party that nominated Barack Obama as its presidential candidate that year. As a group, Democrats are more likely than average to be women and nonwhite, less likely to be religious or married, much less likely to be conservative, and much more likely to be liberal than the U.S. population as a whole.

These results are based on a special Gallup analysis of the demographic and ideological composition of the U.S. population today (based on Gallup Daily tracking from June-August 2011) versus the start of 2008 presidential election campaign (from January-March). This is a follow-up to Gallup's earlier piece on the composition of the Republican rank-and-file.